Best camping story

[kings-x59]

Most of my inconvenient outdoors experiences revolve around broken down boats, in bays, in the gulf of mexico, and once 30 miles out into the pacific ocean. They are only inconvenient because I survived them. I am not an avid camper. My two camping "disasters" involve 98 degree heat at 3am in the morning, my 3 year old son, at the time, belly flopping into the biggest patch of poison ivy I've ever seen, a 3:30 am thunderstorm that flattened our tent, running over the biggest frigging skunk I have ever seen on the last 11 miles into the state park after a 6 hour drive, rain all weekend, baglady deer with the biggest ticks on them I've ever seen begging for handouts throughout the camping park...
I was concerned about two things, would my kids EVER want to camp again, and would the stink go away before we returned the rental van?
BTW, my kids now 18 and 17 talk about those camping trips, cherished memories...apparently they had a better time than I suspected.
post your best/worst camping story.

[GEJ]

Well to rehash a NECO story.NECO 07 was to be a overnite stay for me which was held in PA near Lockdoc's house.Because my RV was no way near done I decided to take my 10 x 20 vendor tent and bunge side walls on it.Went to Wally world and bought a chaise lounge(a cheapy) to sleep on.I miss judged how far it was from my house and didn't get there until like 11:00 PM.Like all NECO's everyone there helped to put up the tent.(well it had been awhile since I had put it up myself and I forgot how the pipes went together)Well there we where in the dark with best bud Peter and a colman lanter trying to get the tent up. PJ,Peter,SafariRob,Lockdoc,well everyone tried to help anyway they could.I gave up after we got 2/3's of it together and left the rest of the top drape on the ground.Now that was about 12:30 AM.Went to bed on the chaise lounge.It was kind of dewy and that meant sleeping near the ground really cold.I tosed and turned for awhile to try to get to sleep while my teeth chattering.The killer was the Wally world chaise collapsed and bent leaving me on the ground.So all the work on the tent was for not.Spent the rest of the night in hotel Astro LT. ](*,)Anyone else other than the good folks at NECO would have me swinging from a tree for being so unprepaired.

[potskie]

I went camping at one of the GRCA sites a few years back. Elora Gorge to be exact well me and a buddy decided to go check out some of the trails around there. Well we found this one hiking trail that was literally on the side of the gorge and followed along the cliff line. After awhile it went down the cliff a bit and was on a ledge on the rock face for quite a distance. Then after a while it came to end almost. there was a flat patch of dirt and a few trees on this 10' x 10' section of ledge. well the trail continued on at the bottom of the 30' cliff, the way the tree roots were it was obvious that we needed to climb down them like a ladder to a part of the cliff face that was like stairs. So we started walking towards the tree roots with me in the lead. Well the rain the night before had turned the dirt patch on the grade into a nice patch of mud that of course is on a grade towards the river. I slipped and started sliding for the edge trying to grab onto anything to stop me from going over. Well as my legs followed by my torso shot out over the cliff I managed to grab a tree root that was right on the edge. Since I had shot out and then grabbed the root I literally swung back towards the cliff with some force and there was a rock jutting out a bit that caught me on my right side. I felt a crunch and a few loud pops. I was now hanging there barely able to hang on. My buddy grabbed my arm and between the 2 of us we managed to get me back up on the ledge. At which point I notice blood on my shirt from a decent cut on my side and I was in alot of pain. So we headed back. When we got back to camp I noticed I was one big bruise and it was really painful to breath. Went to the ER turns out I fractured 2 ribs and needed a couple of stitches. Needless to say that put a damper on my weekend for sure. Being me we went back 5 weeks later and tackled that trail. and what we found after that section was freaken awesome and made me glad we went back. we found this rather hidden and mostly unknown waterfall. Also found some crazy caves that can only be accessed via that trail or boat. The over hangs where the river had worn away some of the rock about 2 feet down from the top were cool as all hell too.

[WVKayaker]

holy sh!t potskie!

[Mongke Khan]

I lived in Wyoming for ten years and worked for The National Outdoor Leadership School--

http://www.nols.edu

--not as an instructor but as what they call Logistical Support, which provided all the backup the field staff needed to successfully run the outdoor education program.

We had buses like the one pictured above to take the students into the mountains, or the desert, or wherever they wanted to go, all up and down the Rocky Mountain Range, from Utah to Montana (and that was just the Wyoming branch).

Those buses had the ground clearance to go just about anywhere and I have lots of great memories of camping out in beautiful country--in a schoolbus.

Although my first inclination was to say, "Nah, you don't want to go car-camping out West, nothing to see there--"

But that would have been dishonest.

[thevalleyboy]

Mine is not all that bad - just a bunch of dumb as ses disrupting things - for a while....

So story goes a nice small back-country campground in BC - provincial campground - with no services, bush road access, and only 2 sites, on a small mountain lake, great site, lots of sun. Go there and take the entire site usually every Aug. Long weekend. So it wasn't Aug long and we didn't take both sites this time - some unfriendly's come up camping blast music till 3am and then decide to come visit us with a CHAINSAW! Walked up the road - and came to our campsite... talk about watching Texas Chainsaw too many times or something - after trying to talk these guys down they decided to get dumb and were getting too aggreesive for my liking... I tried to stay calm - but like the crazy bastard I am (when threatened with a chainsaw) I proceeded to attack them with a bush ready 1978 Ford F350 - and attached to one of their trucks dragged it about 1/2mile..... that ended things.....

It was freaking intense.... especially after I returned fire..... LOL

Oh ya - and I agree - the camping out West is horrible.... ya horrible